


Mermista

by Geckinator3000



Series: Somewhere In the Middle: She-Ra Character studies [1]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Bad Poetry, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, Mysterious ocean rituals, New Beginnings, Ocean, Pyromania, Rebuilding, Salineas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:27:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26251897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geckinator3000/pseuds/Geckinator3000
Summary: The ocean has been calling her all her life. Is she a fish? Is she Moana?No! She's Mermista!(A recap of Mermista's life, and some funky ocean lore about Etherian mermaids.)This is the first of a series of character studies I'll be doing to bridge the gap between Messily Ever Aftermath (completed work by me) and The Fulbrights (soon to be published).
Relationships: Mermista/Sea Hawk (She-Ra)
Series: Somewhere In the Middle: She-Ra Character studies [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1907107
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Mermista

She was four, sitting on the old stone pier with her father, kicking her feet in the cool ocean.   
“Try again!” said Marin, encouragingly. He transformed his strong brown legs into a muscular, two-finned tail by way of demonstration.

Mermista crinkled her tiny nose and squeezed her eyes shut as she focussed on the sea, on its call, on the ebb and the flow and the push and the pull of the tide.  
She opened one eye. Nothing.

“I’ve still got my same old boring feet, Dad!” she complained.

“They look like perfect little feet to me, Misty!” he laughed, scooping her up in his arms.  
“My dearest girl, this is only the first day that you’ve heard the sea calling to you, and it will be calling to you all your life!” He smoothed her curly black hair out of her frowning face, and booped her nose, gently with one fingertip. She giggled, and he smiled.   
“You have so much time, little one. Don’t you worry. Now, let’s go play!”  
With a flip of his jet black tail, he pushed off the pier and into the ocean, holding his daughter close to his chest.

***

She was nine and swimming hard against the outgoing tide, her little tail beating as fast as it could.  
“I can’t do it!” she gasped to her mother, Nerissa, who was hovering just above her and holding position with the same slow, effortless tail-strokes Mermista wished she could replicate.

“It’s alright, Misty. Your time will come, and every day you swim, you get stronger!” Nerissa soothed, reaching down to hold her hand.  
Her father took the other. “Hold on tight and we’ll tow you home.”

With a flick of their powerful tails, they were on their way, back to the towering city of Salineas.

***

She was thirteen, and ten metres down, one hand pressed against the glittering surface of the Sea-Sapphire.  
All around her were her family, illuminated in the thousand fractals of light it threw off. They watched with pride as her heart called back to the sea.

It answered. Deep blue light poured out of the stone and into her chest, lighting her eyes with radiant blue as the ocean’s magic filled her. 

One day, her father thought, one day the Horde would come across the waves and find them.   
It was a good thing they’d find his daughter so strong. 

***

She was fourteen and standing on the pier again, this time with both her parents as they taught her to control her powers.  
Looming above them was the great, shimmering curve of a wave, summoned by Nerissa and halted in its path by Marin.

“I want you to push this back out to sea. Remember, breathe out and let the energy flow from your heart to your fingertips!” Marin instructed.

Mermista inhaled deep and slow, closing her eyes as she concentrated.  
“From your heart to your fingertips,” she murmured, and when she opened her eyes they glowed blue. Drawing back her shoulders, she could feel the weight of the water and the surface of the wave rippled as she stretched her fingers.

“That’s my girl! You can do it, Misty!” smiled her mother.

Mermista exhaled, and pushed from her heart, and the top of the wave rose, turned back on itself, and dropped smoothly away. Several hundred tonnes of saltwater returned, gracefully and soundlessly, to the sea.

***

She was only eighteen when they left.   
Eighteen, and brokenhearted, when the sea reclaimed her parents. 

“I knew this day would come,” her father had said, cupping her face in his hands. “I knew it, but I’d hoped it wouldn’t be this soon.”

“Your grandfather was in his eighties when he joined the ocean. I suppose the years of war have taken their toll on us.” Nerissa said, her hair spangled here and there with threads of grey.

The two of them had grown dorsal fins in the past few weeks, tall and pointed and as black as their tails. Already, their fingers and toes had begun to fuse.

Mermista had been prepared for this all her life. She knew it was the way of the Seafolk, knew that one day she’d swim with the pull of the tide and not against it, far beyond the horizon and into the deep where all of her people went when their time on land was done. From the ocean, she had come, and to it, she would return.

They walked to the shore in silence and embraced before they slipped into the waves. “Goodbye, my dear, for now.” her father said. “The sea will carry you back to us one day,” Nerissa whispered to her. 

She knew she’d see her parents again one day, in those realms of ocean blues, but that could be decades away.   
Decades and she still had to finish this bloody war, if it didn’t finish her first.

“You must be strong, and you must be brave.” was the last thing her parents had said to her before they dove, almost joyfully, into the ocean’s embrace. It was a beautiful thing, after all, to be a part of the sea.   
“I will,” she said, watching them from the shore.  
And she was. 

***

She was twenty-two and not feeling it at all as she stood in the ruins of Salineas.  
Frustrated, she kicked at a loose brick and cursed when it hurt.  
Stupid human toes. Stupid broken bricks. Stupid crumbling Salineas. Stupid, bloody-effing-awful-sh*tty-bastard-war!

She sat down, wiping a few tears from her face, and stared at the sea and wished she was nine again with her parents telling her she had all the time in the world to grow up, to grow strong, to learn and make mistakes.   
Where had all that time gone? The years had passed, and she’d grown strong alright, but not strong enough, apparently, to defend Salineas against repeated attacks. She hadn’t even been there when it fell, at last, its remaining citizens fleeing for their lives through its burning wreckage.  
At the time, she’d been in Brightmoon and they’d been at war so she’d limited herself to a few days crying in the bathtub. That was that, she’d told herself. There was no time for grief, not the real kind anyway.

Now, as she leaned back and watched seagulls wheel in the wide blue sky, she had all the time in the world for it, and still, the tears wouldn’t come. 

She heard the crunch of well-worn seaboots behind her and didn’t even need to look back. His clothes smelled of smoke and salt, and that told her everything she needed to know.  
“How are you, my dearest Mermista?” Seahawk asked her, gently, as he sat down beside her.  
“Fine. I’m somehow fine, and that’s what ISN’T fine.” she replied, resting her chin on her knees.

“Would burning a boat help? That always makes me feel better,” he suggested.   
“Thanks Seahawk, but right now I actually want to feel sad and angry. I just can’t seem to let it all out, you know? It’s like, stuck somewhere in my chest and I wanna get it all out and wash everything away so I can like, start again or whatever.”

“Start again, you say? Mermista, I have an idea!” Seahawk sprang to his feet, inspired. “Are you coming, dearest?” he asked, holding out one hand to help her up.  
She took it. “Okay.” she sighed. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m all out of ideas soooo....What’s the plan?”

The ship wobbled as it balanced on the crest of the wave.  
Mermista stood on the sea stack behind it, her entire body trembling with the effort of holding back a hundred-metre high wall of water.   
Tears ran down her face and dripped into the churning ocean below. She was looking at the ruins of Salineas for the very last time. 

“Steady, my dear! Just a little longer and I’ll be done!” Seahawk called down to her from his precarious position aboard the ship. He secured the last of the sails and leaped nimbly down to his position behind the tiller.  
All around him were stacks of splintered timber, scavenged from the wrecked city, and hastily piled aboard. They’d doused it all in a kind of flammable black sludge Mermista had discovered when a stray Horde missile had impacted the ocean floor nearby. Although the hole had been plugged quickly by dropping the wreck of the ship responsible into it, the black crud had stained the sea for weeks, and cleaning it up had been a hell of a job. Entrapta had examined it to see if it was useful in any way, and she’d said it could be used as some kind of fuel but commented, “Why would we want to use something so dirty and inefficient?”  
So, they’d scooped it all into barrels to keep it out the way, and at last, they’d found a use for it. 

“I’m ready! Are you?” Seahawk shouted to Mermista, grinning like a madman.  
His smile was infectious. “Ready as I’ll ever be!” she called back, and let go.

The wave dropped away as she leaped into it, and she let herself be pulled along by it, swimming up its back to the crest where she could ride it beside Seahawk.  
He was standing at the tiller of his ninth ship, hanging on for dear life and whooping with joy. With Mermista stabilising the wave, he was actually at very little risk, but he still felt like he was staring Death in the face and laughing at him.  
“Thirty knots and still rising!” he yelled to anyone who’d listen. The land was approaching fast, or rather, they were approaching it.

“Prepare yourself!” he shouted dramatically to Mermista. She rolled her eyes, but dove beneath the water, turned, and drove herself hard up towards the surface.  
As she did so, Seahawk tossed a burning rag into the nearest pile of wood and leaped clear of the side of the boat. Mermista propelled herself out of the water and caught him mid-air, both of them laughing wildly as they plunged back into the sea.   
“My dear, I swear on my sailor’s boots that knowing you is the adventure of a lifetime,” Seahawk said, kissing Mermista on the cheek when she came back up to the surface with him in her arms. 

The boat went up like a torch, and Mermista blatantly defied several laws of physics as she swam back towards the sea stack, resisting the irresistible pull of the gargantuan wave. This kind of nonsense was easy when you were a magic mermaid, and you could command the water to push you through the sea like a torpedo, sweep you up, and drop you neatly on a sea stack.

They wiped the water out of their eyes just in time to see the wave make landfall. The burning ship lit the wave of water like a beacon as it broke over the lonely spire of Salineas’ one remaining tower, and its timbers burst at last as it was impaled and shattered. The water poured into the city, carrying everything away in its thunder.

“Farewell, Dragon’s Daughter IX! It was nice knowing you!” Seahawk yelled, triumphantly.  
“Goodbye, Salineas.” sighed Mermista. Seahawk put one arm around her waist and pulled her close.  
“Feeling better, now?” he asked quietly.  
“Yes,” said Mermista. “I think so. It’s sad to see it go, but somehow this feels...right?”

They heard them before they saw them: unearthly, melodious whistles coming from the water below them. Two immense black fins broke the surface, one tall and straight, one shorter and curving. Orcas.   
Mermista squeezed Seahawk's arm gently to get his attention, and together they stared in disbelief for a moment.  
“Could it be them?” he whispered.  
“No way! It’s forbidden. It can’t be.”  
“Go,” he said, gently. 

Mermista dove into the sea to meet the two orcas. They whistled in greeting and came over to press their noses against her. 

“So it’s all over now?” the female asked.  
“Yes. The war has ended,” sang Mermista to her mother,  
“and the sea has washed away the wreck and the ruin.” her father sang back. 

The deep came alive with flashes of black and white as dozens more orcas rose to the surface, singing as they swam, in a language no human would ever learn.  
Mermista replied, adding her voice to the joyful chorus.   
“The sea gives life to us all,   
and we all give life to the sea  
We all return to the ocean  
For all of us come from the sea  
The deep, it calls and we answer  
For we all know the voice of the deep  
By the light of the moon and the pull of the tide  
And the wash of the wave on the shore.  
Rubble and ruin has been erased  
and war is remembered no more.”

Mermista could feel a warmth in her chest as the sound reverberated and swelled, and behind it, as always, she could feel the sea beckoning. But the call was not irresistible yet. Not quite.

Her father swam forward and nudged her.   
“It is not time for you to join us yet, little one. Your days on the earth have not finished. Return to Salineas, and rebuild.”

“Take courage, Misty! You are not alone.” Nerissa consoled, seeing her daughter’s daunted expression. She glanced up and showed her sharp teeth in a surprisingly gentle smile. “Something tells me there is one with you who would very much like you to return.”  
Mermista blew out a cloud of bubbles. She’d promised she’d never leave Seahawk, not at least not until he left her for whatever lay ahead in his next life.  
Some wild adventure, she thought, as she swam to the surface and called out to him.

He whooped as he hit the water with a splash, and immediately grimaced when the first thing he saw was Marin’s massive form looming in front of him.  
Nevertheless, Marin grinned and flicked Seahawk onto his back with a neat toss of his head. 

“Lovely to meet you at last, uh, Sir!” Seahawk stammered. “And you too, M’am,” he added, reaching out to shake Nerissa’s proffered flipper with both hands. “May I say how, um, your daughter has inherited your dazzling smile!” Nerissa smiled graciously, and the water around them trembled with the orca pod’s curious, clicking laughter. 

As one they turned, and bore them back to where Salineas had once stood and where it would again, back to the old stone pier where Mermista had sat with her father when she was four and the ocean called her for the first time.  
It would be calling for some decades more.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this as a one-shot, which means I made it all up entirely in the space of three hours, which means "I hope it's kinda coherent???"  
> Anyway,  
> Orcas are my favourite creatures ever, and I love the sea, and today I bought more tropical fish....so I guess I was in a fishy mood!  
> Hope you enjoyed it :)


End file.
